News for
New York Minute (2004/I) More at IMDb Pro »

3 articles from 2008

24 September 2008 1:30 AM, PDT | From DreadCentral.com | See recent Dread Central news

There was a movie about a decade ago called Hijacking Hollywood that featured a movie-within-a-movie that was a soulless, megabudget, Hollywood special effects extravaganza version of Moby Dick. Now here we are ten years later and that in-joke is about to become a reality.

Variety reports that Universal is revving up for a CGI-laden "re-imagining" of Moby Dick that sounds like it'll have less in common with Herman Melville's classic novel and more along the lines of Orca on steroids. The studio wants Timur Bekmambetov, director of the Russian Night Watch films and this past summer's Wanted, a motion picture one of the critics over at Spill.com astutely summarized as "Harry Potter for Columbine kids", to direct from a script to be written by the duo that penned the Olson Twins' New York Minute. Co-producing the film will be the husband and wife duo known collectively as "The

Foywonder

23 September 2008 1:10 AM, PDT | From GetTheBigPicture.net | See recent Get The Big Picture news

I'm not entirely thrilled to hear this claim: "Our vision isn't your grandfather's Moby Dick." That's Adam Cooper, who along with Bill Collage will write an adaptation of Herman Melville's classic that will be directed by Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Night Watch).

"This is an opportunity to take a timeless classic and capitalize on the advances in visual effects to tell what at its core is an action-adventure revenge story," Cooper adds, reducing wildly and inappropriately the impact of many of Melville's major themes.

If you think Bekmambetov doing classic literature is cool, I've got no argument. However, I don't think this is necessarily the right project, which is how I feel about Guy Ritchie taking over Sherlock Holmes. The aesthetic just isn't right.

Of course, if the writers of Accepted and the Olsen Twins' New York Minute say Moby Dick is really an action-packed thrillride, then Bekmambetov is a good choice.

Colin Boyd

22 September 2008 9:33 PM, PDT | From firstshowing.net | See recent FirstShowing.net news

Out of all the classic movies that could've been remade within the next few years, would anyone have expected Moby Dick to be one of them? And to top that off, Timur Bekmambetov, the Russian filmmaker who brought us Wanted this year, will be directing. As you might have expected (by now), it's going to be a "reimagining" of Herman Melville's classic tale. "Our vision isn't your grandfather's Moby Dick," screenwriter Adam Cooper explained. "This is an opportunity to take a timeless classic and capitalize on the advances in visual effects to tell what at its core is an action-adventure revenge story." I think that means we can expect something as epic and CGI-laden as Peter Jackson's King Kong remake. Universal Studios reportedly paid in the high six figures for screenwriters Adam Cooper and Bill Collage (both of New York Minute and Accepted previously) to write the screenplay.

Alex Billington

3 articles from 2008